[Critique Group 1] 8-16, 2017 critique

[Kevin Brown]

    trading aunt Sally 
by Kevin Brown 
There are times when a story has more in common with juicy gossip than a truly narrative tale. With the speeding motion of runaway word boulder's drawn by the gravity of downhill momentum, newsworthy accounts can often go spinning a wild careening route through the community at large. It can go bouncing from teller to teller, changing shape and color with each contact of the randomly encountered personality. 
I first heard this story during an introduction to the popular local homemade favorite beverage known as muskadine wine. I do have to admit that this potent fruity brew likely added much to the authenticity of what I heard somewhere during its fourth or fifth circuit of the impromptu doorstep gathering. 
It was claimed that they, family members, traded 
old strangely silent Aunt Sally for a sack of potatoes and poor stuttering Billy for a jug. The bottle in question was probably filled with the very same previously identified elixir of missed shaped truths known as muskadine wine. Nevertheless, between streams of tobacco juice propulsion, know-it-all Junior insisted that it was a gallon of that: "mean ol'  Silver Georgia Moonshine!" 
Aunt Sally wasn't truly silent. Its just that the silent treatment was her only effective weapon against a family full of inattentive disrespectful younger relatives and tiredly complacent age mates. When she was upset, Aunt Sally could go hours, days and even weeks with out speaking a single intelligible word . Sitting in the bent wood rocker in her room, fanning herself, aggravated sighs and constant humming of unidentified old fashioned Negro spirituals were the only responses to requests for a dollar or two from her meager social security check. 
Similarly and contrasting, Stuttering Billy did sometimes stutter. But, the descriptive moniker came from nervous ticks and twitches almost severe enough to resemble a modern dance which could have actually been symptoms of a serious neurological impairment. His innocently performed antics brought much notice wherever he went and was a constant source of curiosity. The family's concern had more to do with their own public embarrassment and impatience rather than any possible diagnosis and cure. 
Western Tennessee Mental Health Institute was the biggest employer in Hardman county and wielded great influence with the areas politicians. It was rumored that `quite a few Campaigns had been bolstered by its generous patronage. This appeared to have the effect of allowing wide ranging liberties to be taken with regulations and the civilized rules of common human decorum. 
Even though, the facts probably rested somewhere firmly between two extremes of reality, I just couldn't rid my mind of late night TV, B movie images. Somber faced acolytes of an ancient temple based faith. With hood shadowed eyes and voluminous robes, they seem to float over the grass to the front gate, firmly taking committed ones securely by the hand. Were they doing the bidding of secretive dark ecclesiastical high priests? Did I uncover something sinister in this often unnoticed corner of the south? Maybe this was simply just an example of administrators and psychiatrists who were tenaciously wed to the old mental health medical model. Possibly, the answers could only be found on the yellowed back pages of treasured family Bibles, faded spaces in tattered photo albums and the wavering chronology echoes in the halls of myth making. 


  In the 1930's, Gail Laughlin, the first woman in Maine's legislature authored a bill penalizing husbands for involuntarily committing their wives for offenses such as arguing over common subjects and disobeying orders for house work. In one instance, a Lutheran minister committed his wife for having different religious views. This is just some of the documentation of involuntary commitment for the purpose of social control. Such cases may be the basis for the rumors of trading relatives for material goods. 
 
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